Oh, the tides. The olive branch I clung to found itself a place to nest. And now the rivers cry over me, inconsolate, every drop burning my starving lungs.
A kind stanger sings to me. She can't save me, she knows. But her voice steadies the rhythm of the waves. She sings like a mynah: of the weedy thorn tearing against my ankle, describing every prick as if it were that fateful day when she, a ten-year-old innocent, fingered her first needle.
The hostile waters holler an encore. The enemy, my loudest cheerleader.
Feet communing with sky, my thorny scar now a Mona Lisa smile. No-one has seen water ballet as strange or artful as mine.
They seem to say, with relish: Many waters cannot quench the fire of love; nor can rivers drown it.
09 April 2006
23 November 2005
Therapy Talk
Do you have a pill for my neurosis? Please say you do.
Would you psychoanalyse me and tell me what’s wrong? It should be easy enough. Bark a command, and it might ring a bell.
As you sit there filing your nails, tell me, do you think I’m normal? Please don’t say I am.
Normal people adopt cats off the street, even though they already have ten. Normal people use words they never learnt how to pronounce in casual conversations. Normal people switch the lights off and prance around in their hostel rooms as if it were a nightclub, to Jackson Five.
And as I sink deeper into your reclining couch, pray throw me a life vest.
Save me from the crybaby, the infantile solicitor, the incensed preacher, the dominant psychopath, the philistine critic, the anorexic glutton. Save me from myself.
Would you psychoanalyse me and tell me what’s wrong? It should be easy enough. Bark a command, and it might ring a bell.
As you sit there filing your nails, tell me, do you think I’m normal? Please don’t say I am.
Normal people adopt cats off the street, even though they already have ten. Normal people use words they never learnt how to pronounce in casual conversations. Normal people switch the lights off and prance around in their hostel rooms as if it were a nightclub, to Jackson Five.
And as I sink deeper into your reclining couch, pray throw me a life vest.
Save me from the crybaby, the infantile solicitor, the incensed preacher, the dominant psychopath, the philistine critic, the anorexic glutton. Save me from myself.
10 October 2005
All Aboard
I told the pessimist in me to take a break. She keeps things real but wonderland is really where I always wanted to be. So I stepped, with a hop and a skip, aboard a train with unpredictable timetables and stops so long and dreary, even the most patient passenger gets fidgety.
Through the window, I waved goodbye, not knowing to what or who. Then I saw my heavy suitcases laying abandoned on the platform, and I shed no tears.
I caught a glimpse of Lost-&-Lonely Saturday afternoon. I waved goodbye.
I spotted Miss Vain Hope On A Date. And I blew her a flying kiss.
The train moved and my heart beat like a butterfly dying in the heat yet thrilled by the iridescent petal it rested on. Flap, flap, flutter it went.
Painful palpitation. I never want it to stop.
Through the window, I waved goodbye, not knowing to what or who. Then I saw my heavy suitcases laying abandoned on the platform, and I shed no tears.
I caught a glimpse of Lost-&-Lonely Saturday afternoon. I waved goodbye.
I spotted Miss Vain Hope On A Date. And I blew her a flying kiss.
The train moved and my heart beat like a butterfly dying in the heat yet thrilled by the iridescent petal it rested on. Flap, flap, flutter it went.
Painful palpitation. I never want it to stop.
18 August 2005
Club Grub
Ah, Velvet Underground. Thank you for 11 years of sending crepulous men to bed with equally crepulous women (not neccesarily the same one). Today, I am one blissful post-clubber because i am going to lala land with some happy vibes. Thank you, thank you for tonight's cocktails mixed with love, the wine, and that last shot of tequila that trailed up to me, searching me out in my little corner where i was standing with my equally appreciative friend.
Thank you for being fertile ground for the free displays of utter unabashedness, of SPGs in tops that would surely send their poor mothers doing flips in their graves. The same tops that would give plastic surgeons a field day with must-do enhancement recommendations.
Not forgetting those balding men, champagne in hand, pretending to make tete-a-tete with similarly noncommital conversation partners, while their roving eyes roam around the room, defying the darkness with night vision goggle alertness.
Thank you for making me look so good, your dim lighting being the best concealer of eyebags and disguiser of flaws. For your exquisite choice of adorable DJs. For ruining my jealously-guarded diet with your zesty $3 hotdogs (mmMMMMmmm mMMMMmmmm!).
Though tonight, I did trip over a velvet chair in front of a group of too-cool clubber types. But the best part is that after seeing everybody's bad behaviour, nothing I ever did tonight, no matter how embarassing, could make me blush.
Thank you for being fertile ground for the free displays of utter unabashedness, of SPGs in tops that would surely send their poor mothers doing flips in their graves. The same tops that would give plastic surgeons a field day with must-do enhancement recommendations.
Not forgetting those balding men, champagne in hand, pretending to make tete-a-tete with similarly noncommital conversation partners, while their roving eyes roam around the room, defying the darkness with night vision goggle alertness.
Thank you for making me look so good, your dim lighting being the best concealer of eyebags and disguiser of flaws. For your exquisite choice of adorable DJs. For ruining my jealously-guarded diet with your zesty $3 hotdogs (mmMMMMmmm mMMMMmmmm!).
Though tonight, I did trip over a velvet chair in front of a group of too-cool clubber types. But the best part is that after seeing everybody's bad behaviour, nothing I ever did tonight, no matter how embarassing, could make me blush.
09 August 2005
02 August 2005
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Hmmm ... I wonder if I reproduced that from memory or is it another one of those processed paradoxes I write at work when I don't have something genius to say and I'm running out of time? I've been working so much that I don't know if these things in my head are my opinions or something i think up to save my job.
Anyways, back to today's topic. Does age spell good change or bad change?
I shall answer it with a parable.
My parents used to covet my company. But work got in the way of our together time. And now they have learnt to live without me, getting over over Joy withdrawal symptoms cold turkey. Now I come home, and they're in bed, without so much as a "home so early?"
Cats in the Cradle is the song for me. I'm Dad whose son got used to his workaholic ways and decided to be workaholic too when the time came for them to spend time together.
Does any of this make any sense?
Anyways, back to today's topic. Does age spell good change or bad change?
I shall answer it with a parable.
My parents used to covet my company. But work got in the way of our together time. And now they have learnt to live without me, getting over over Joy withdrawal symptoms cold turkey. Now I come home, and they're in bed, without so much as a "home so early?"
Cats in the Cradle is the song for me. I'm Dad whose son got used to his workaholic ways and decided to be workaholic too when the time came for them to spend time together.
Does any of this make any sense?
17 July 2005
07 July 2005
14 June 2005
CableVision
I've been telling myself (besides reminding myself to stop talking to myself), that I should Get Out More. So last week, I did. I stepped out of my bedroom, into the living room.
That's where I found Cable, awaiting.
Alicia Silverstone was newly single and getting picked up by sizzling men at pubs, and hooking them up with her friends. At the end of the show, she got back together with her ex. Wimp!
Then came Frasier. Dad, hobbling just fine with his walking stick, was busy dating two chicks at once. He was actually savvy enough to give each babe a different ring tone so he'd know immediately who was calling. Didn't work. He got dumped, on the double.
I was so tickled, it didn't matter how far-fetched this all was.
No, let met rephrase. TV is great precisely because it is utter_and_complete balderdash. If it were realistic, I'd be watching endless takes of a chubby asian girl hanging out in her room (and occasionally stepping out to watch cable).
Now, if you've read enough books on success, you'd have noticed that most of them say more or less the same thing: "To reach your ultimate goal, visualise it first."
I look into my mind's eye and see myself yellow and gray and cackling over a re-run of Friends. And feel successful already.
That's where I found Cable, awaiting.
Alicia Silverstone was newly single and getting picked up by sizzling men at pubs, and hooking them up with her friends. At the end of the show, she got back together with her ex. Wimp!
Then came Frasier. Dad, hobbling just fine with his walking stick, was busy dating two chicks at once. He was actually savvy enough to give each babe a different ring tone so he'd know immediately who was calling. Didn't work. He got dumped, on the double.
I was so tickled, it didn't matter how far-fetched this all was.
No, let met rephrase. TV is great precisely because it is utter_and_complete balderdash. If it were realistic, I'd be watching endless takes of a chubby asian girl hanging out in her room (and occasionally stepping out to watch cable).
Now, if you've read enough books on success, you'd have noticed that most of them say more or less the same thing: "To reach your ultimate goal, visualise it first."
I look into my mind's eye and see myself yellow and gray and cackling over a re-run of Friends. And feel successful already.
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